The Augment in the Fragments of the Epic Cycle and Other Fragmentary Greek Epic

I discuss the use of the augment in fragmentary hexametric Greek texts outside of early epic Greek (Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymns) and the mock-epic works (such as the Batrakhomyomakhia). I quote them after West 2003 but also analyze fragments that are not found in West. I determine the metrically secure forms, discuss previous scholarship on the meaning of the augment in epic Greek, and then proceed to the actual analysis. For my investigation, I divide the fragments in three categories: first, those that can be analyzed; second, those that have fewer forms and that allow for an analysis but require more caution than those of the first category; and third, the ones that have no or not enough metrically secure forms but are still intellegible. The starting point for my investigation is that the augment had near-deictic/visual-evidential meaning and that it was used in focused and highlighted passages as well as to emphasize new information. This is confirmed by the fragments, but as was the case in the larger epic corpus, there are exceptions to the rules in the Cycle as well.

The Introduction of North China’s Ceramic Culture to 15th Century Joseon and the Influence on Buncheong Ware

This paper is a study on Korean Buncheong ware in relation to the ceramic culture of North China. The focus on drawing connections between the ceramic industries of Korea and North China expands on views presented in previous scholarship. Research thus far has traditionally ascribed the origin of Buncheong forms and decoration techniques to the influences of inlaid celadon from the late Goryeo Dynasty and the Cizhou ware of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. The ceramic culture of North China was quickly transmitted to Korea due to the naturalization of the Jurchen people, who took part in founding the early Joseon Dynasty. Another factor was the migration and settlement of immigrants from North China, which began from the late Goryeo Dynasty and continued into the Joseon Dynasty or the fifteenth century. Therefore, the influence of North China is evident in various aspects of Buncheong ware from the early fifteenth century as observed in the forms of inlaid examples produced during this period. In the latter half of the fifteenth century, increased cultural exchange between the two regions and the growing number of migrants from North China were two important factors in the development of Buncheong in Korea. This is particularly true for examples featuring underglaze iron-brown (cheolhwa), sgraffito (bakji), slip-brushed (gwiyal), and slip-coated (deombeong) decorations fired in kilns populating the region of Chungcheong-do and parts of Jeolla-do. Traces of ‘Bunjang (粉粧)’ ceramics, which served as the transition from celadon to White Porcelain, is detected not only in the fifteenth century Buncheong ware of Joseon, but also in the porcelain of North China produced in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties. Though South China also experienced a quick transition from celadon to White Porcelain, the inclusion of ‘Bunjang’ ceramics is unique to North China. In conclusion, early Joseon Buncheong originated and developed from the inlaid celadon of late Goryeo–a progression that occurred under the ceramic culture of North China, whose influences prompted innovations in form and technique vital to the development of Buncheong ware.

Aristotle’s Mixture in its Medical and Philosophical Background: The Hippocratic De victu and the Aristotelian De generatione et corruptione

Aristotle’s notion of qualitative interaction ruling both the process of mixture and the process of reciprocal elemental transmutation is based upon the idea of a physical contrariety endowed with two extremes and a wide central area where the opposite forces reach different equilibrium points (i.e., the so-called mixtures) or can be present to the fullest degree (in this case we do not have a mixture, but an element). Differently from previous scholarship which attributes this notion specifically to Aristotle, we have found, in a text which Aristotle seems to have been acquainted with, the Hippocratic De victu, an incipient structure of a contrariety endowed with extremes and a central area where opposite forces meet and yield respective equilibrium points, mixtures, which, as in Aristotle, give an account of the variety of beings existing in the world. In this article, we suggest the possibility that in the development of the Aristotelian thinking about elemental and qualitative dynamics, the Hippocratic De victu may have contributed to suggesting to Aristotle a way of envisioning the structure of his basic physical contrarieties.

Chastity, Foreign Theories, and National Heritage Reorganization: Hu Shi (1892-1962) Addresses ‘The Woman Problem’

This article examines Hu Shi’s view of “The Woman Problem” (funü wenti) through his tripartite approach for achieving a Chinese Renaissance as enunciated in his 1919 article “The Significance of the New Tide” (Xinsichao de yiyi). Our reading of the 1919 article reveals that Hu conceived of the twentieth-century Chinese Renaissance as a meticulously planned reform project based on a tripartite approach that involved: (1) researching concrete problems (yanjiu wenti), (2) importing foreign theories (shuru xueli), and (3) reorganizing national heritage (zhengli guogu). The article aims to demonstrate how Hu applied each of these interconnected methods to “The Woman Problem.” Previous scholarship on Hu’s views on women has failed to notice that it was methodologically integrated into his overarching Chinese Renaissance project and simultaneously underpinned by his academic program to reorganize national heritage. This essay also probes the quality of Hu Shi’s ‘feminism’ by expounding how his analysis of “The Woman Problem” was integrated into his overarching program to achieve a Chinese Renaissance.

Prospective and Retrospective: Le Corbusier’s Twofold Voyage d’Orient

In 1911, a twenty-three-year-old Le Corbusier embarked on a six-month journey from Dresden to Istanbul, and back to his native Switzerland through Greece and Italy. Upon his return, the young architect unsuccessfully attempted to publish his travel notes as a book in 1912 and again in 1914. Only in 1965, forty days before his death, did Le Corbusier conduct the final revision of his 1914 typescript for publication. The next year, Le Voyage d’Orient was published posthumously. Previous scholarship on this book has overlooked the importance of Le Corbusier’s 1965 edits, consequently approaching the work as an authentic testament of the author’s youthful spirit. Based on a new and contextualized reading of the 1914 typescript hand-annotated by Le Corbusier in 1965, this article demonstrates how the late edits constitute a re-writing of a segment of Le Corbusier’s own history, especially in relation to his ideas of modernity, tradition, inspiration, and attachment to Mediterranean architecture.

Blurred Boundaries and Novel Normativities

This article discusses critical issues surrounding the Jewish-Muslim encounter, framed as an evaluation of the approach and conclusions of two recent publications by Aaron W. Hughes: Shared Identities: Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam (2017) and Muslim and Jew (2019). Hughes’s works present a critique of the established historiography on Jewish-Muslim relations and exchanges, examining such subjects as the Jews of late antique Arabia, the Jewish matrix of the Quran and formative Islam, and the Judeo-Islamic synthesis of subsequent centuries. I interrogate Hughes’s use of sources, treatment of previous scholarship, and privileging of the specific lens of the “religionist” in approaching the historical evidence. Both of the works under consideration here exhibit numerous problems of conception and argumentation that undermine their value for broadening current horizons of research or refining prevailing pedagogies. Ultimately, although they provoke numerous important questions and deftly expose the conceptual and ideological underpinnings of older scholarship, the books fail to offer a constructive path forward for specialists or stimulate a meaningful paradigm shift in the field.

“What kind of cop are you?”: Disco Elysium’s Technologies of the Self within the Posthuman Multiverse

I suggest in this article, drawing upon Francesca Ferrando, Karen Barad and N Katherine Hayles, that Disco Elysium illustrates the human through the mode of a ‘posthuman multiverse’. Per Ferrando, humans and other beings act as nodes in a material multiverse while what we think, eat, our behaviours and relations, create part of a rhizomatic ecology that can be understood as who and what we are. This, I illustrate, overcomes a complicated tension in existing posthuman theory, particularly as it relates to game studies. Although theorists have detailed the entanglement of players and machines, and the new materialist nature of becoming, it is unclear to what extent human-machine assemblages can be said to be a singular ‘thing’. This is tackled in Disco Elysium as the seemingly mundane and often invisible actions the player takes, all play a role in constructing Harry Dubois and the world that is also endlessly producing him. Game actions, therefore, can be viewed as ‘technologies of the multiverse’, the ontological functions through which beings come to exist in a dimension. The game positions the player in a ‘relational intra-activity’ not only with the actions and outcomes of play, as discussed in previous scholarship, but also with the hypothetical outcomes of choices they have not made. When read through the lens of Ferrando’s philosophical posthuman multiverse, Disco Elysium represents a valuable resource for bridging gaps in contemporary posthuman scholarship.

Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Knowledge Revisited

In the Sixteenth Century, the Italian humanist Giulio Camillo built a ‘Theatre of Knowledge’ for the French King Francis I. Previous scholarship has debated whether this theatre was a physical place, a mental (mnemonic) space, or both. New archival evidence that has been overlooked in previous scholarship on Camillo, and his theatre, unequivocally proves for the first time that Camillo’s theatre had in fact been built in Paris. This invites a reconsideration of past reconstructions of the theatre and allows for the formulation of a new one. In this article, I have explored the hypothesis that Camillo’s theatre resembled an anatomy theatre. I have used 3D modelling and virtual reality in order to reconstruct some of the spatial features of Camillo’s theatre and explore how these insights further our understanding of his theatre in terms of historical and current practices surrounding the presentation of information and the invention of new knowledge.

Beyond Tribadism: Alternate Discourses on Female Homoeroticism in Greek and Latin Literature

<p>Scholarly accounts of sexuality in the ancient world have placed much emphasis on the normative dichotomy of activity and passivity. In the case of female homoeroticism, scholars have focussed largely on the figure of the so-called tribas, a masculinised, aggressively penetrative female who takes the active role in sexual relations with women. My thesis seeks to set out a wider conceptualisation of female homoeroticism that encompasses erotic sensuality between conventionally feminine women. The first chapter surveys previous scholarship on ancient sexuality and gender and on female homoeroticism in particular, examining the difficulties in terminology and methodology inherent in such a project. The second chapter turns to the Callisto episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, beginning with the kiss between the huntress Callisto and Jupiter, who is disguised as Callisto’s patron goddess Diana. The Callisto episode contains hints of previous intimacy between Callisto and Diana, and the kiss scene can be read as an erotic interaction between the two, both of whom are portrayed as conventionally feminine rather than tribadic. The third chapter examines several Greek intertexts for the Callisto episode: Callimachus’ hymns to Athena and Artemis, and the story of Leucippus as narrated by Parthenius and Pausanias. These narratives exhibit a similar dynamic to the Callisto episode, in that they eroticise the relationships both between Diana and her companions and amongst those companions. An educated reader of Ovid’s Metamorphoses would plausibly have had these Greek texts in mind, and would thus have been more likely to read the relationship between Diana and Callisto as homoerotic. Finally, the fourth chapter approaches Statius’ Achilleid from the perspective of female homoeroticism, a move without precedent in past scholarship. The relationship between Deidameia and the cross-dressed Achilles engages intertextually with the Callisto episode, presenting another exclusively female-homosocial environment in which homoerotic desires can flourish.</p>

Mechanism, Occasionalism and Final Causes in Johann Christoph Sturm’s Physics

This paper argues that mechanism, occasionalism and finality (the acceptance of final causes) can be and were de facto integrated into a coherent system of natural philosophy by Johann Christoph Sturm (1635–1703). Previous scholarship has left the relation between these three elements understudied. According to Sturm, mechanism, occasionalism and finality can count as explanatorily useful elements of natural philosophy, and they might go some way to dealing with the problem of living beings. Occasionalism, in particular, serves a unifying ground: It will be shown that occasionalism can account for the problems of the source and transmission of motion that mechanism faces, while at the same time explaining the finality of non-rational living beings as designed by God.